Russia

Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, has confirmed that it hired the consultancy of Tony Podesta, the elder brother of John Podesta who chaired Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, for lobbying its interests in the United States and proactively seeking the removal of various Obama-era sanctions, the press service of the Russian institution told TASS on Thursday.

"The New York office of Sberbank CIB indeed hired Podesta Group. Engagement of external consultants is part of standard business practices for us," Sberbank said.

As had been periodically leaked over the past several weeks, overnight both Poliico and the WSJ confirm that President Trump has offered former Utah governor Jon Huntsman the job of U.S. ambassador to Russia and is in the process of submitting paperwork to accept the position; Huntsman is said to have accepted the offer. This is the latest sign of backtracking from plans for Washington-Moscow conciliation, a development which will make future reports based on "anonymous sources" that Trump is a Kremlin puppet even more problematic.

Via Justin Raimondo of AntiWar.com,

Everyone is suddenly talking about the Deep State – the configuration of spy agencies, career bureaucrats, and overseas spooks whose murky omnipresence has been brought to light by President Trump’s contention that he was “wiretapped” by his predecessor.

Via Whitney Webb of TheAntiMedia.org,

Earlier today, Wikileaks once again made headlines following its release of the “largest ever publication of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents.” The massive release – just the first batch in a trove of documents code-named “Vault 7” by Wikileaks – details the CIA’s global covert hacking program and its arsenal of weaponized exploits.

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Washington’s Benevolent Mask Is Disintegrating

Paul Craig Roberts